First Breath
by Shinjite Florana
Summary: Still I continued to cry, unhappy with all this change, but Warmth held me tight to her. No, warmth had a new name now, suited to this new world—Mother. - The day of InuYasha's birth from the eyes of the newborn.


Back from the dead after 4 years, I come with tales of College and Feudal Fairytales. I wanted this story to be one of a _bunch_ of one-shorts, but—let's be honest—that probably won't happen. So here's a story about babu InuYasha AS TOLD BY babu InuYasha.

It's more dramatic than you think!

* * *

My first gasping breath was startlingly easy. The comfortable heavy warmth of what normally filled my lungs was replaced by something thin, cold and light. The absolute lack of the substance invaded my body before my immediate rejection of it, only to suck in air again, instinctively, desperately.

The entirety of the environment was alien. A force I'd never truly felt before grasped at my raw body, binding me to this new world. What it pressed me too was hard and uncomfortable. Never before had I been subject to my own weight and the press of the floor against my skin.

My universe had expanded in an incredible mirror of a much larger reality, and in that moment I could feel myself small against an ever-reaching backdrop.

My skin was on fire with the new sensations battering me. Each one impressing it's greeting,

_You are one_

_You are small_

Fear crept tightly in my throat, tearing from me in wails. Was this life now? This cold abandonment? This insignificance? I couldn't quite remember what it had been before, but I missed it. I missed Home, I wanted Warmth. Warmth had always been there, surrounding. Home beat a steady lullaby of security, sometimes humming in deep comfort. But it was gone, replaced by this inconsequentiality.

Then a new sensation. It was tender and delicate in its movements. A shadow of Warmth in its touch, wrapping around me. It lifted me, supporting this new crushing weight of life, pulling me up toward it.

This new environment made my hair stiff, and it stuck about my face as I continued to whimper. This new Tenderness was now close and it gently pushed my hair back from my face, exposing it to the chilling air and I whined further.

"Welcome little one."

For the first moment since I entered this world I silenced. I knew this hum, it was the hum of Home, the voice of Warmth, more crisp than it had ever been. Even with the familiarity, I soon continued to wail. Warmth hummed further, soothing as it pulled me nearer. I felt her hair fall against my face in the closeness.

I was pulled into Warmth, returned, at least partially, into Home. I was pressed against this novel incarnation of her, soft against my small form. Here, so close, I could hear the lullaby of this new Warmth thump softly next to me.

Still I continued to cry, unhappy with all this change, but Warmth held me tight to her. No, Warmth had a new name now, suited to this new world.

Mother.

And for what felt like a long moment I stayed like that, pressed against her as the calming lullaby beat from her chest. But something changed.

It felt slow. The lullaby softened, stopped, started. The disruption continued. It faded like this, and the Tenderness that pressed me to her shook a moment and loosened as the song faded.

And then there was silence.

And I was alone.

This realization came suddenly to me and my cries only increased. Something was horribly wrong with Mother. She had never ceased singing to me. She had left me. I was alone.

This panic dimly sat in me as I wailed. I was one, I was small, I was weak. I could do nothing but release this primitive mourning, this cry for help.

It was cold being alone.

But it wasn't so cold anymore. It was starting to become warm. No, not warm, this was hot. Uncomfortably so.

A loud noise, crackling and splintering, made the world around me move slightly. Soon the heat surrounded me, threateningly. I wondered if this new existence of mine would change again, whether my brief life here would be snuffed so soon.

A stubbornness welled in my chest and I wailed louder in complaint, obstinate in my refusal to pass once more into the unfamiliar.

The spitting and moaning of the world around me grew louder. A world-shaking crush fell somewhere nearby.

"Izayoi!"

This new hum was foreign. Deep, desperate, and foreign. I continued to cry.

"Izayoi!" it repeated.

My eyes had yet to open since changing states to this uncomfortable one. They stayed scrunched closed as I continued to scream at this new world. Despite my blindness, I felt the shift of light through my eyelids and heard a horrendous crumble as something tipped above and around me.

"Izayoi." The hum uttered again. It was softer now, but very close. New noises accompanied this hum, this not Mother, strange and clinking. I felt him shift above me and Mother—but Mother was gone. I lay next to her hollow form.

A metallic sound, as foreign as everything else about this alien, came from above me. He hummed again, something my ears didn't catch over the heat's intense crackle around me.

I sucked in more air to let out in a roar of noise. It was becoming harder. Something in this new thin environment was becoming heavy. The air was now thicker and sticky. My body rejected it instinctually. The little air that forced its way between my eyelids stung, making warm tears leave raw trails down my cheeks.

More movement from not Mother. I continued to ignore him.

There was a sudden shiver from Mother's form. The Tenderness of Mother next to me moved. She gasped.

"Anata," she breathed the word softly.

This new player had brought back Mother. Anata. Anata had brought back Mother.

There was shifting about me. Mother's Tenderness grasped around me again, pulling me closer and lifting me up with her as she moved. Something heavy was laid about us.

Another touched me. Anata, I guessed. The touch was colder, more calloused than that of Mother's Tenderness, but with no ill intent. It pressed gently against my stomach, pinching something in front of me. A tugging weight fell from my body.

"You're hurt," Mother hummed.

Anata's touch lifted to my face and gently pressed against my cheek. There was a sharpness to his contact, pointed at each end of the individual pressures making up his touch.

"I am not long for this world." Anata hummed stoically, a delayed response to Mother's voice.

Mother's grip tightened around me. Through my tears I attempted to force my eyes open, but they only lifted a crack before the air, heavy with its blinding sting, forced them shut again, only briefly imprinting a blur of movement and color into my mind.

Anata's touch left my face briefly before returning. Something smooth and cold was in his grasp, its press against my skin revealing it to be round. The object pushed itself into the closed lid of my eye forcefully. The marble seemed to have a will other than Anata's, and it crawled its way through my skin, not tearing it apart, but into it. I didn't like this new discomfort and wailed.

Mother gasped.

"It won't hurt him," Anata's voice was quick and quiet.

Somewhere there was a crush, louder than the normal crackle and hiss that surrounded me. The feeling of the marble against my skin was gone. It had instead become a part of me. Its weight and press were gone and the discomfort it caused forgotten.

"I leave my Legacy to him."

_Clink clink._

Anata had moved. Mother mimicked him and I swayed, pressed against her softy.

There may have been a third hum now, another alien, but my wails tired me desperately, and my senses cared less and less about what was happening around me. Instead I wished for relief, desperate in this chaos.

"InuYasha."

Anata's hum was familiar now.

"The child will be called InuYasha." Something seemed so big about that voice, so encompassing even in this wide world.

"Live long."

Mother responded. She called to him, I could tell. "Anata!" she hummed like a mantra, like a prayer. But her hum was strained and pulled something tight in my heaving chest.

"Go." His voice was huge, it was something large and powerful and unbreakable.

And then we were moving. Mother shifted around me, and sounds moved past us. Soon the air thick with poison abated and the chill crisp that had first greeted my lungs returned, chiller and crisper than before.

Soon mother was heaving against me, her steady lullaby beating for me in a terrific frenzy. The air moved slower past us. And then for a moment all was still.

I didn't know.

I didn't know that this woman I called mother had paused on a hill-face and turned to look back at her home belching fire into the sky as it took the life of her beloved.

I didn't know that her legs shook and trembled with the strain of running barefoot through heavy snow, her insides wailing as loud as I was in complaint against the movement as a small line of crimson freckled the pure canvas of the snow as it trickled from between her legs.

It didn't really register when she slumped into the snowdrift and I quieted in her arms, tired from my unceasing tirade.

I did, at the time, feel the cold against my eyes as they finally cracked open for the first time. I did see the sky, a red-gray gradient as the flames and smoke painted above me. And I did see the face of my Mother, blurry but close to mine as she looked into my eyes for the first time.

But I didn't know.

I didn't know that she choked back a sob and smiled so blessedly at me as she recognized the golden eyes and instantly fell in love with them for a second time.

And I didn't know when we rose again and a woman that had given birth, died, resurrected, lost her husband, and escaped with her half-breed child and her life forced her frozen and aching legs to move, desperate to shelter me from all harm.

All this drama of my entrance into this world was lost on me.

Still she carried on.

* * *

Yaaay, AAALL DONE! So how was my 1st person, huh? Not very good, I know. Where 1st person is in some ways easier to write, it's defiantly harder to write _well._ I normally leave that to Jane Eyre and the Brontë sisters.

There was a lot about this story that worries me. Because it's from a newborn's perspective, I'm forced to be very vague and use a lot of sense words (Warmth, touch, hum). In the story Inu no Taishō does things like lay the robe of the firerat over them, sever InuYasha's umbilical cord, and place the black pearl in InuYasha's eye, all things that I'm not sure came across properly because of my limits as a writer.

Hopefully you still enjoyed. **THANK YOU SO MUCH!**

**PLEASE REVIEW!** I'd love some criticism!


End file.
